The Polyphony of Learning in the Learning Disabled

The predominant view in the learning disabilities field conceptualizes the development and continuation of dysfunctional cognition as something that can be described primarily in terms of neurological functioning, perception, information processing, or problem solving. I have criticized this viewpoint maintaining that social relationships, which by the standard learning disabilities (LD) definition are excluded as being responsible for the disabilities, need to be regarded as the context in which disabled cognition is created and embedded (e.g., Coles, 1978, 1980, 1983, 1984). In this article I will discuss some of these social relationships in the learning of the learning disabled by analyzing the process in a clinical session during which an illiterate adult successfully learned. Surprisingly, with few exceptions (e.g., Feuerstein, 1979; Stone & Wertsch, 1984), few studies have been conducted on the process of successful learning by the learning disabled in an instructional situation. I say surprisingly because it seems that a transformational approach through which a poor learner learned might uncover cognitive and associated activity otherwise obscured in the study of disabled learning through the educational products, usually test results, of good and poor learners.